Ex-Interior Deputy Testifies Lobbyist Offered Him Job

By PHILIP SHENON

Published: November 3, 2005

The former No. 2 official at the Interior Department acknowledged to Congressional investigators on Wednesday that he had received a job offer while at the department from the lobbyist Jack Abramoff and that he had other contacts with Mr. Abramoff, the focus of a corruption inquiry.

The official, former Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles, insisted in testimony to a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee that there was nothing improper in his ties to Mr. Abramoff and that he had immediately reported the job offer, in 2003, to ethics officials in the department. It can be a crime for federal officials to open job negotiations while working for the government.

Mr. Griles, who left the department to set up his lobbying firm, acknowledged the offer after being confronted by the committee chairman, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, with an e-mail message from Sept. 9, 2003, by Mr. Abramoff. In it, Mr. Abramoff told his lobbying colleagues that he had met with Mr. Griles that evening, that Mr. Griles was ''ready to leave Interior and will most likely be coming to join us'' and that ''I expect he will be with us in 90-120 days.''

Despite the job offer and other e-mail messages that showed contacts between the lobbyist and Mr. Griles, the former official insisted he did not have a special relationship with Mr. Abramoff. ''I don't recall intervening on behalf of Mr. Abramoff's clients ever,'' he said.

The claim was met with skepticism from the senators, who released more than 300 pages of e-mail communications and other documents from the files of Mr. Abramoff and his clients that documented his aggressive efforts to lobby Mr. Griles and other Interior Department officials on behalf of Indian casinos. The department, which includes the Bureau of Indian Affairs, is responsible for federal oversight of Indian gambling.

The hearing, the latest in a year-old inquiry by the panel into accusations that Mr. Abramoff had defrauded tribes out of tens of millions of dollars, also brought new attention to Ralph Reed, the influential Republican political consultant who once led the Christian Coalition and is now a candidate for lieutenant governor of Georgia.

Mr. Abramoff's previously released internal records show that Mr. Reed's lobbying company was paid millions of dollars to help block gambling that might compete against casinos owned by Mr. Abramoff's tribal clients. Mr. Reed, among Mr. Abramoff's closest friends, has insisted that he had no knowledge that the anti-gambling effort might have been underwritten by the proceeds of Indian casinos.

Another witness , a former lawyer for the Coushatta tribe of Louisiana and its gambling operations, said Mr. Abramoff had asked her to try to find a way to hide the source of more than $150,000 that the tribe was offering to support Mr. Reed's effort. The tribe was among Mr. Abramoff's most lucrative clients, paying him and his partners more than $32 million.

''Mr. Abramoff asked if the tribe had another entity through which the payment could be made,'' said the lawyer, Kathryn van Hoof, adding that the money was eventually funneled through a businessman with a long association with the tribe.

Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, the ranking Democrat on the panel, said the evidence showed that Mr. Reed had asked to be paid by the tribe through ''a variety of entities'' because of ''his concern about being publicly associated with gambling money,'' an issue that has emerged in Mr. Reed's campaign in Georgia.

An e-mail message released on Wednesday shows that on Feb. 11, 2002, Mr. Abramoff contacted Mr. Reed to provide him with a newspaper article about the Coushatta, adding, ''That's our client.''

A spokeswoman for Mr. Reed had no comment, saying he had not seen the latest documents.

The papers included e-mail exchanges between Mr. Reed and Mr. Abramoff, as well as checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to Mr. Reed's consulting firm, Century Strategies of Duluth, Ga., by the American International Center, a group controlled by Mr. Abramoff's former business partner, Michael Scanlon. Mr. Scanlon, the former House press secretary to Representative Tom DeLay, has refused to testify before the Indian Affairs Committee.

A spokesman for Mr. Abramoff's law firm said he was in the ''impossible position of not being able to defend himself in the public arena until the proper authorities have had a chance to review all accusations.''

The statement lacked comment on the contacts between Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Griles and others at the Interior Department. Mr. Griles said he was startled by the job offer in 2003. It was made in a meeting with Mr. Abramoff and another partner at his lobbying firm, Greenberg Traurig.

''It raised alarms with me, because what was that about?'' Mr. Griles said. ''I went and talked to the ethics office and told them the conversation had occurred.'' He added that the ethics officers assured him that he had done nothing wrong. ''My relationship with Mr. Abramoff was, as with other lobbyists, nothing more, nothing less,'' he testified.

Mr. Abramoff's e-mail messages show that he used a conservative lobbying group, the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, and its president, Italian Federici, as a go-between with Mr. Griles.

The council was established in the 1990's by Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, whom Ms. Federici has called her mentor. The council received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from Mr. Abramoff's tribal clients.

Ms. Federici, scheduled to testify, did not appear.

Photo: J. Steven Griles, a former Interior Department official, at a hearing. (Photo by Carol T. Powers for The New York Times)